How do SEO Goals Impact Content Marketing Strategy?

How do SEO Goals Impact Content Marketing Strategy?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are both extremely important aspects of any online marketing strategy. The content on your website can have a big effect on how highly it ranks in the search engine results pages. In combination with other factors, such as the links that point to your site, your content determines the visibility of your website in the major search engines' results. In return, SEO can affect the success of your content marketing strategy by influencing how many people are likely to find your content through an online search. By developing a content marketing strategy template that considers SEO, you can begin to build an integrated digital marketing strategy that successfully attracts customers to your brand.

LET SEO DRIVE YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

Any content marketing agency will tell you that the content that appears on your site should be relevant, original and valuable to readers. That’s all true, but you also need to ensure that your content appeals to the search engine algorithms that regularly crawl through your site. First, you need toresearch the keywordsthat people use to search for businesses like yours online. Next, focus on creating reader-friendly original content that relates to these keywords. The aim is to create content that ranks highly in searches for popular keywords and also captures the attention of anyone who lands on your site and starts reading. Begin by using theGoogle keyword toolto find out what keywords people are using and then decide which ones you will target in your content marketing strategy template.

CONTENT MARKETING’S EFFECT ON SEO

As well as incorporating your SEO goals into the content that you produce for your website, you also need to consider how content marketing can affect your SEO strategy. First, if you’re not already producing highly engaging content that people want to share, you need to up your game. When someone likes your content enough to link to it from their own site, not only do you gain visitors from that site, but your overallsearch ranking also increases. Search engines attach value to inbound links when calculating your site’s rank, with particular priority being given to links from authoritative, well-respected sites.

Second, you need to think about the content you publish in locations other than your own website. Posting on social media is one way to reach out to a larger audience, but you should also think about spreading your brand voice even wider. Writing aguest blogpost for a related site can be a good way to expose a new group of readers to your brand, present yourself as an expert in your field, and gain a valuable new backlink for your site. In this way, content marketing practices that go beyond publishing content on your own website can have a very positive impact on your SEO goals.

ALIGN YOUR GOALS

When developing a digital marketing strategy, it’s important not to think about SEO and content marketing as independent, disconnected goals. Both SEO and content marketing are vitally important for building your brand online and persuading a wider range of people to connect with your business. If you don’t already have a content marketing strategy template that includes SEO goals, it’s time to create one.

Interested in learning more about how your SEO goals work with your content goals and how these goals should roll into your business growth goals? Download the free Introduction to Growth-Driven Design eBook for a complete introduction.